Kathleen Carlo-Kendall is a Koyukon Athabaskan artist from Nenana, Alaska. Beginning in the mid-1970s, she studied silversmithing and sculpture under Inupiaq modernist Ronald Senungetuk (1933-2020) at the University of Alaska Fairbanks (UAF) Native Arts Center. Carlo-Kendall is primarily a maskmaker, and for many years was one of the only women or Athabaskans making masks. Her artwork mixes customary Yup’ik and Deg Xit’an styles with aspects of cubism and found objects to create a unique visual lexicon that draws equally from historic Alaskan imagery and formal Western art styles. Carlo-Kendall has been prominently featured in seminal Alaska Native exhibitions such as Contemporary Native Art of Alaska (1979), Wood, Ivory, and Bone (1981), New Traditions: An Exhibition of Alaska Native Sculpture (1983), Alaskameut ‘86 (1986), Bending Tradition (1990), Alaska 2005: Native Art Now (2005), and Place of Origin (2018). Her artwork can also be found in the permanent collections of the Anchorage Museum, UAF Museum of the North, Alaska Center for the Performing Arts, Ted Stevens International Airport, and the Alaska Native Medical Center, among others.

This mask was created in the workshop of the Native Art Center at UAF and features a variety of found objects. The central face features a shift in perspective that alludes to Inupiaq and Yup’ik transformation masks as well as cubism. The mask is adorned with empty shell casings, hair, brass tacks, fishing lures, feathers, and ribbons from the Athabaskan Stickdance ceremony. Carlo-Kendall has been a longtime teacher at the UAF Native Arts Center and the Alaska Native Heritage Center, and several of her students, such as Drew Michael, have gone on to have successful art careers in their own right.